All over the place, in every nook and cranny, there are not well educated people setting themselves up as horse trainers. Who are the professors at Oxford, Stanford, MIT? Are they people who dropped out of high school? And yet in the world of horses there are so many out there teaching and training who are the equivalent of high school dropouts.
This is a quote from Denny Emerson on his Tamarack Hill Facebook page.
However, the following is a quote from Denny Emerson in his book, Know Better to Do Better: Mistakes I Made with Horses (So You Don't Have To). He was talking about Cat, his first competitive eventing horse.
If I had him today, my approach would be to do everything in my power to earn his trust. I would do groundwork, I would do lots of walking under saddle. I would try to get him to stretch, to gently bend, to get him over the idea that a human was an adversary — something like the ‘lion at the water hole’ that wanted to cause him pain.
Cat was typical of so many horses that are scarred from their interactions with humans. Some can be healed more successfully that others, but in all cases, patient, gentle handling is the way forward.
Denny wrote about Cat in his mid seventies. But as a horseman in my seventies, I'd like to work with teachers and trainers who recognize the importance of building trusting relationships, through patient and gentle handling much earlier in life. They don't need to have a degree from Dartmouth like Denny does. But they should help me to build trusting relationships with my horses.
The podcast quotes Tom Dorrance from his book, True Unity - Willing Communication Between Horse and Human.
Some people will ride a horse as long as the horse lives and they will never get what I try to get as early as I can, for a foundation. I don’t mean that I’m trying to get everything completed, but to get enough there to where if the horse gets troubled he will come to me; or to where I can get to him to come to me for security and cover. Without that foundation I feel very insecure with a horse.
If you're interested in learning more about the Bluebonnet Equine Humane Society Training Challenge, here's a link to their website.
And here's a link to the Second Half Horsemanship website.